Walcher: Fracking study fans the flames of fear-mongering

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Colorado is an “all of the above” state that produces virtually every type of energy used in America today. Coal, wind, solar and hydropower are abundant in Colorado, along with some of the world’s largest supplies of oil and gas. One analysis says the state produces one of every 50 barrels of domestic oil and is home to nine of the nation’s largest natural gas fields.

Despite this energy bounty, Colorado also has its share of detractors who are critical of hydraulic fracturing, the technology responsible for jump-starting the state’s economy. They worry about fracking’s impact on the environment and human health, but their objections are based on flawed information from groups whose agenda is more political than environmental.

Consider a recent post on National Geographic’s website alleging a link between fracking and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the Colorado River. The author, Sandra Postel, writes that University of Missouri researchers have found evidence of EDCs in water near fracking sites in western Colorado.

“The new findings add urgency to calls for moratoriums on fracking,” she asserts, “and regulations and monitoring put in place to safeguard water supplies and public health.”

As intended, the article rang alarm bells among fracking opponents. But like so many others that have written about fracking, Postel neglected to mention the study’s limitations. For example, the Missouri researchers did not establish any link between fracking and the presence of EDCs other than that both occur in the same state.

Furthermore, there is nothing unusual about finding EDCs in the Colorado River. As the EPA’s website explains, human hormones, pharmaceuticals, household detergents, and other products in effluent from licensed sewage plants deposit EDCs in surface water every day.

Nor are they dangerous at the levels found in the Missouri paper. A wastewater treatment specialist commenting on Postel’s article wrote that the levels were “between non-detectable and the minimum recommended acceptable levels as researched by the EPA.” He added, “The parts per billion figures listed in the study… are way below the estimated EDCs generated by discharge from Waste Treatment Facilities caused by people throwing prescription medications down their toilets at home.”

Secondly, Postel’s article attempts to bestow credibility on the “Halliburton loophole,” a bizarre claim that former Vice President Dick Cheney and his oil industry friends exempted fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act. She also asserts in the absence of federal regulations, “states have been slow to fill the regulatory gap.”

Postel is wrong on both counts. There is no Halliburton loophole making fracking “exempt” from the SDWA. The law, passed in 1974 and updated several times, has never contained language applicable to fracking, making it impossible for it to have been exempted.

Fracking is regulated under many other federal and state statutes, including strict regulation in Colorado. In fact, a 2009 study by the Groundwater Protection Council found that state regulations are “environmentally proactive and preventive.” So much so that the Council warned that new “national regulations on oil and gas exploration and production would be costly to the states, duplicative of state regulation, and ultimately ineffective because such regulations would be too far removed from field operations.”

By ignoring these facts and adhering to the anti-fracking rhetoric, Postel has done a disservice to her readers. She fans the flames of fear-mongering, but provides nothing of substance to the nation’s vitally important energy policy debate.

When conducted carefully in compliance with existing regulations, fracking provides an effective way to develop America’s own energy resources and increase our energy independence. It is also building a stronger economy, both in Colorado and for the nation.

Greg Walcher is a former executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and the author of “Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take it Back.”